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 LA JOLLA. CALIFORNIA
 
 OF 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM: 
 
 A LETTER TO A POLITICIAK 
 
 SYDNEY DOBELL. 
 
 Sctonb 6bition. 
 
 LONDON: 
 CHAP^IAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY, 
 
 1866.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 ROIJSON AND SON, GREAT NOUTHKRN PRINTING WORKS, 
 
 PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
 
 542 
 
 \2LL> 
 
 D^5 
 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 You wish me to set forth in a Pamphlet-letter 
 the scheme of enfranchisement to which I alluded in 
 our late conversation on Parliamentary Reform. I 
 think that even your flattering request would not 
 compel me to what must necessarily be a brief and 
 insufficient exposition of that scheme, if I did not 
 care more for its principles — which I shall be glad to 
 see yourself or any other eminent publicist embody 
 more happily — than for the machinery by which I 
 propose to apply them; and if I did not believe that 
 the question of Reform will retain its troublesome 
 Premier-haunting character, till we answer it on 
 principles more organic, expressed in machinery more 
 natural, than those of that provisional and temporary 
 reply which, in 1832, was the best that state exigen- 
 cies allowed. 
 
 But I believe that the principles of the scheme you 
 desire to examine are so conformable to the best order 
 of national development, and so necessary, therefore, 
 to any such change in our institutions as may main-
 
 tain our present place among the progressive nations, 
 that if, in the following remarks, I find time, and 
 you patience, for anything like a clear indication of 
 them, I shall cheerfully forego the attempt to present 
 you with an elaborate jwjet de loi, and shall not be 
 seriously disappointed if the claims of more peremp- 
 tory work, the shortness of my stay in England, and 
 the limits of any letter that I could conscientiously 
 inflict, just now, on your busy life, may even oblige 
 me to offer you my plan without those assistant sta- 
 tistics and illustrative instances which your wide 
 knowledge and practised judgment can so readily 
 supply. I am the less mlling to wait for greater 
 leisure to either of us,, because a great national con- 
 troversy on the subject of Reform seems presaged 
 pretty plainly for the coming year; and as Parlia- 
 mentary Reform has come in our day to mean reform 
 of the popular branch of Parliament, and the patient 
 is not usually the best judge of his own case, one is 
 glad to expect that, in this age of journalism, a large 
 part of the discussion will be outside the House of 
 Commons. If that expectation be just, the outsiders 
 should at once begin their irregular portion of the 
 del)ate, since it is not the extramural disputations 
 themselves, but the national mind which they exercise 
 (and your Giant-politic, having perhaps to clean out 
 his rijiderpest^ clul) some Asiatic maii-cater, or liold 
 his bale of cotton for ()mj)hale, is not often quick at 
 his lessons), tliat must })roximatcly affect the more 
 formal controversy indoors. Therefore, and because
 
 one specific advantage of a popular debate should be 
 the outbreak, undeterred by too nice an etiquette, of 
 whatever true thought on the subject in dispute the un- 
 ceremonial nation can anywhere throw up, I dispense 
 with all modest exordium, and address myself point- 
 blank to the honour you would have me undertake. 
 
 If, as I have hinted. Parliament has special diffi- 
 culties in discussing Parliamentary Reform, arising 
 from the retrospective self-conscious character of 
 the investigation, the non-parliamentary world has 
 also special difficulties, resultmg from an opposite 
 cause. If the legislature, with its eyes turned in- 
 ward, is likely to get no just notion of its own 
 objective personality, we who regard it from with- 
 out are likely to be too much impressed with the 
 characteristics of its bodily presence. And that 
 bodily presence is, at to-day's point in our history, 
 precisely of the kind on which it is most dangerous 
 to reason, because it is, and has been for more than 
 thirty years (that is to say, during the political life of 
 those who will be most likely to examine it), the ques- 
 tionable shape of a hybrid. A hybrid, as most of us 
 are aware, may be very safe and useful in action, but 
 it is singularly perilous and untractable as an object 
 of scientific inquiry, especially when that inquiry is 
 for the discovery of organic principles. He who 
 looks for horse or for ass in the horse-ass is pretty 
 certain to find it; and even the steadiest judgment 
 will conscientiously see more ass or more horse, ac- 
 cording to its natural bias or acquired prejudices.
 
 That wondrous interfusion of differing traits to a new 
 resultant that is neither and both, which we see m 
 the produce of two individuals of the same species, 
 does not exist in the non-propagating hybrid. Its 
 life has no consistent paradigm, and in breeding 
 another creature of the same kind (I hoj)e the 
 illustration may not seem irreverently pastoral), 
 we must decide whether of the two co-operating 
 natures is the more apt to the work for which 
 the hybrid is designed. It may be that by ad- 
 justing the relative size and -vigour of the parents 
 the quality we seek can be strengthened in the 
 ofFsprmg. It may be that new conditions of the 
 work may render it desirable to omit an element 
 formerly useful, and to rear no longer the mule but 
 the horse. 
 
 Now, as we aU know, the Parliament of England 
 was, up to times quite recent, a means of assisting a 
 governing sovereign, or a governing oligarchy, with 
 what wisdom might be in the nation ; and the theory 
 of parhamentary representation, as understood by our 
 earlier jurists, was the rationale of a method for 
 eliminating that wisdom and conveniently presenting 
 it to the ruler. When, however, (as Ave all also 
 know, ) in process of time the sovereign really reigned 
 -without governing, that is to say when England, 
 gradually and unconsciously, became the only true 
 and safe republic that ever existed (because, among 
 many "bccauses," a republic wherein the highest 
 prize in social rank is im})ossiblc to the ambition of
 
 any citizen), Parliament virtually assumed to be the 
 alter ego of the governing nation, and by parliamen- 
 tary representation the nation sought to create that 
 other self. The problem was no longer how to ex- 
 tract a certam element from a compound national 
 mass, but how to present, at one time and place, a 
 national epitome, synopsis, and quintessence — in 
 short, the old problem of macrocosm and microcosm. 
 But as this change in the problem, and in the 
 desideratum it was to yield, was never theoretically 
 stated, and as (faithful to that peculiarity in all our 
 English changes by which we avoid the break of con- 
 tinuity that is mortal to all, except the lowest, living 
 bodies) the modern Parliament and the ancient Par- 
 liament differed little in appearance and materials, 
 it was natural that many observers should ignore 
 what had essentially taken place. We had turned 
 the old wisdom-making machine into a kind of demo- 
 meter, but the two natures in the cross refused to 
 mix ; we had configured mthout metamorphosis, and 
 compounded without transubstantiation. Therefore, 
 while the popular politician honestly discerns in the 
 resulting institution only the modern version of de- 
 mocracy, the conservative eye as honestly perceives 
 only the last form of " Witena Gemot." According to 
 the Witena-gemotic system, the principles on which 
 Parliament should, if needful, be further modified, 
 would seem, at first glance, to be simple and self-evi- 
 dent. Whenever a non-electing class in the nation can 
 demonstrate its equality in whatever qualities are ex-
 
 8 
 
 pressed by "Witena" with any class already possess- 
 ing the electoral franchise, that non-electing class has 
 proved its right to share the possession. But, as recent 
 arguments have indicated, further consideration will 
 show that this simple formula is not sufficient to the 
 case, because as, by the hypothesis, an equality with 
 the enfranchised class possessing the lowest amount 
 of qualification, entitles any other class to share pos- 
 session of the franchise, whatever accession of num- 
 bers happened to the electing body might happen at 
 the lowest qualifjdng degree. And to increase the 
 number of inferior choosers is, of course, where 
 majorities are to decide, to deteriorate the chances 
 of the choice. Therefore, when choosing a " council 
 of the wise," an equality in choosing power mth a 
 class already privileged to choose, ought not, /?<?r se^ 
 to entitle a non-choosing class to share the privilege 
 of choice. But who will ever con\'ince the excluded 
 class of the justice of their exclusion? Or who can 
 wonder that the denial of claims which, to the claim- 
 ants, must appear so logically irresistible, arouse those 
 heartburnings which, when inflaming great masses of 
 physical force, end in rebellion and revolution? I 
 will not pause upon these and other difficulties, in 
 any theory of parliamentary representation that has 
 " ivisdom^^'' in the popular sense, for its final cause, 
 because (like others whose eye is not specially con- 
 servative) my ])ias sees in our modern Parliament 
 rather those vital principles by which it may sub- 
 serve present and future necessities than those by
 
 which, however beautifully and beneficially, it con- 
 nects the present with the past. 
 
 I think that, by the "Reform Act," and by the 
 Parliamentary policy that has succeeded it, we prac- 
 tically gave up the advantages of being governed by 
 others mser than ourselves (as under our origmal 
 Parliaments) for certain other advantages supposed 
 to result from self-government. But the amount of 
 advantao-e from self-o-overnment — ^whether individual 
 or national — is (I think the deepest truths of human 
 nature are concerned in this) in proportion to the 
 selfness of it. Experience shows (and in this the 
 deepest thinking would forerun experience) that the 
 mistakes and ill-doings of genuine self-government 
 are, in the long-run, more advantageous to the' 
 governed, because more conducive to real progress, 
 than the sage anachronisms and out-of-place wisdom 
 of governors whose mental and moral rank is, for 
 other purposes, very far superior to their own. But 
 (and, again, some of the fundamental truths of human 
 nature are concerned) for the errors and wrongs of 
 self-government to be salutary they must be genuine : 
 for the sins we commit under partial compulsion 
 have little, if any, therapeutic effect upon us; and' 
 good deeds mechanically done are nearly useless to 
 moral development. 
 
 Therefore, by partial self-government we lose, at 
 once, the specific advantages of nationality and 
 bureaucracy — the educational effects of our own 
 right and wrong, and the temporary and superficial
 
 10 
 
 benefits which might accrue from a perfunctory sub- 
 servience to others. It seems to me therefore that, 
 in endeavouring to represent the British people in 
 ParHament, you must, at the stage of national life to 
 which we are arrived, endeavour towards whatever 
 may, in the truest, completest, and most living man- 
 ner, realize self-government ; — whatever will, in such 
 time and place as is consistent with unity of action, 
 present that British nation which, in a manner 
 inconsistent with such unity, is spread abroad over 
 these islands. I say "present" it; for, when theo- 
 rizing on this subject, we must remember that, in 
 making Parliament, we are not creatmg an entirely 
 vicarious being, — an absolute other self, by whose 
 'substitution we escape all personal activity, and in 
 whose mere and sufficient proxy we alone have 
 responsible existence, but a representative agent 
 whereby we (who occupy such and such territories, 
 own armies, navies, and a flag, have, at home 
 and abroad, all kinds of material and immaterial 
 interests, and will that here, within our own borders, 
 and elsewhere, the right be done) are ad extra to 
 take not only our place, but our part, in the com- 
 munity of nations, and, ad i?itro, so to act and enact 
 as shall reach the allegiance, and, in some sort, the 
 co-operation of the humblest and remotest subject of 
 this empire. 
 
 Now, in representing an individual, whether man 
 or nation, so that it may virtually be and act, en 
 pcriiiannire^ in a ])lncc wliore it is not, how must you
 
 11 
 
 represent it ? Neither at its best nor its worst ; but 
 at the best which it can healthily and continuously 
 maintain. Represent a man in that state wherein 
 he says his prayers, or makes love, or reads poetry, 
 or enjoys fine pictures, or performs an heroic action, 
 and your representation is, for practical purposes, 
 untrue; because no man can healthily maintain him- 
 self in that key through all the hours of every day. 
 Represent his lowest possibilities, and you are still 
 more perniciously false. Represent him even at a 
 vulgar mean, below what his qualities can healthily, 
 harmoniously, and continuously reach, and your 
 representation, if he is bound to realise it (and Par- 
 liamentary representation is, as we have seen, a 
 representation we are bound to realise), is untrue, 
 and morally deleterious. But represent him at the 
 highest moral, intellectual, spiritual, and physical 
 degree, which, with no more strain than is healthy 
 stimulus, he can consistently and effectively main- 
 tain, and your representation, being true to the 
 essential and persistent characteristics of the original, 
 will not only represent him fairly, honestly, and 
 efficiently to others, but, if he is to back it by 
 personal action, will place himself under exactly 
 those fortunate conditions of present exercise which 
 are also the happiest guarantees of beneficial develop- 
 ment. If these things be true of just representation 
 when the individual to be represented is a man, they 
 ■will be found, I think, equally true when the original 
 to be reproduced is that large man a nation. I assume,
 
 12 
 
 therefore, that a just national representation is such 
 as represents the nation at its efficient durable 
 BEST. Granted this kind of representation to be de- 
 sirable, by what machinery can it be accomplished? 
 Xot by such as should merely represent numbers; 
 for numbers, inspired by somethmg that is not due 
 to number, are capable of a higher national life than 
 they could themselves originate. These flesh and 
 bones of the state depend, and seem likely long to 
 depend, for their noblest national character, on the 
 vital life supplied by other functions. Yet numbers 
 must not be unrepresented. You cannot appraise 
 a man's total nature by his bodily Aveight and forces, 
 but in representing his sum of ability you omit "them 
 at your peril. Nor, for similar, but not identical, 
 reasons, is it sufficient to represent property. We 
 want not a democracy^ — in the modern sense — nor 
 a plutocracy, but a nation : and not only a nation, 
 but, as I have already suggested, a nation at its 
 efficient durable best. Extremes are comparatively 
 easy, and so is vulgar mediocrity; but the healthy 
 best has ahyays been the crucial difficulty of portrait- 
 painter, moralist, and psychologist. And if to create 
 this kind of other-he is difficult when the primary 
 self is an individual man, how much more difficult 
 when the i[)sissimus is a nation ! 
 
 I think there are four obvious methods in which, 
 with more or less success, it might be attempted. 
 One, but the least desirable, would l)c to represent 
 classes instead of })laces. You might so represent
 
 13 
 
 classes as to create an assembly of intensely typical 
 men, whose correlation of forces might result in such 
 a dynamical mean as should give the strength and 
 direction of thinking and feeling England. The 
 highest philosophy, the merest heroism, the widest 
 knowledge, might leaven the grosser representatives 
 of the (so to speak) popular flesh and blood, to a 
 total that should express the nation at its " effi- 
 cient durable best." But, apart from the fact of our 
 instinctive English dislike to class representations, 
 this mode would be guilty of a great human waste. 
 We do not want philosophers in the legislature. 
 Their function is to prepare governors and governed 
 for a better than the present best; and their legis- 
 lation would always, therefore, be that most pathetic 
 kind of failure, the impracticability of beautiful 
 anachronism. Discarding this method, I see three 
 others. You might endeavour so to modify the fran- 
 chise as to favour a practical union of all the aristo- 
 cracies — the aristocracy of blood, of talent, of land, 
 of wealth, of science, and of skill — e. g. the here- 
 ditary "nobility and gentry," the chief thmkers, 
 artists and learners, the exceptional traders, and the 
 skilled artisans — i. e. the born " upper classes" of 
 the country, (for the skill of a skilled artisan implies 
 a born aptitude,) against the dead weight of mere 
 numbers and stupid welfare. Or you might, by 
 slightly altering our present modes, make a Parlia- 
 ment of political physicians, able in popular diagnosis, 
 who should do as a legislature what journalism does
 
 14 
 
 in another fashion — reproduce, to the best of their 
 power, that which tact, talent, and study teach them 
 to be " Public opinion." Or you might create a 
 self-adjusting electoral machine to do that work in a 
 less conscious and voluntary manner. Of the three 
 former of these methods I say nothing here, except 
 that I would rather not depend on them till the 
 fourth has proved impossible. And of the self- 
 adjusting self-registering machinery for that fourth? 
 Towards some mechanism of this laographical sort 
 I would, with much diffidence, offer the following 
 suggestions : — 
 
 The thing of which you would create such another 
 self as you can bring into the palace of West- 
 minster, is not a nomadic or stationary crowd, but 
 that unity a nation. Therefore, in representing its 
 constituent parts, you must represent them in their 
 constituent character. That is to say, in represent- 
 ing the proportionate value of each constituent, you 
 must estimate his part in the size, shape, and weight 
 of that unity, his formative share m the national 
 whole; — i.e. you must represent him not as the man 
 but as the citizen. This large One a nation, is, so to 
 speak, a great Chinese puzzle, made up of different 
 parts, each part differmg in size and shape; and in 
 estimating the political value of a man, you require to 
 know not what and hoAV much he is, per se^ but what 
 and how much of him goes to the puzzle. You are 
 going to make an enormous national civis, and you 
 must make it by aggregating not men but cives.
 
 15 
 
 You must, therefore, give to each voter who coacts 
 with his fellow-citizens in choosing a representative, 
 such an amount of influence in that choice as shall 
 express his comparative value as a citizen. The 
 special characteristics of a citizen are, I think, those 
 which relate him to his compatriots (including in 
 that term his sovereign and his fellow- citizens) and 
 those which relate him to a certain quantity of the 
 earth and its goods — social relations and, to speak 
 familiarly, "vested interests." (1 say "to speak 
 familiarly," because, of course, a man may have an 
 " interest" in the existence of a " relation.") If it is 
 answered that, inasmuch as relations may exist with- 
 out corresponding virtues, and interests without ade- 
 quate rights, the representation of relations and in- 
 terests would not necessarily reach that standard of 
 " efficient durable best" which I have proposed as 
 the test of beneficial representation, I would reply 
 that, in the present state of our laws, and of their 
 administration, the maintenance, without legal punish- 
 ment, of interests and relations is, taken generally 
 and for practical purposes, sufficient proof and mea- 
 sure of the virtues that should actuate and the rio^hts 
 that should justify them, e. g. that out of a given 
 number of masters and heads of families there will be 
 a large majority in whom those relations indicate the 
 presence of an average amount of the appropriate 
 magisterial and paternal qualities. Therefore, if you 
 represent social relations and vested interests, you 
 are not only representing the outward configuration
 
 16 
 
 of the citizen, his ci^dc size, shape, and weight, and 
 consequently his constructional value m the national 
 form, but you also represent (not "vvdth the delicacy 
 of a recording angel, but in as accurate a way as is 
 usually possible to great human estimates) the virtues 
 and the rights which are his quota m that total heart, 
 soul, and conscience, whereby alone the li\Tng body- 
 politic can attain or maintain its "efficient durable 
 best." Which of the social relations should repre- 
 sent themselves — which of a man's social conditions 
 as subject, husband, father, master, servant, artisan, 
 tradesman, ratepayer, landlord, tenant, dealer, capi- 
 talist, professor, graduate-in-arts, and the like, should 
 separately represent itself by an electoral vote, and 
 should therefore add to that sum of votes by which 
 I would express his comparative importance as a 
 citizen, is a matter of detail that does not affect prin- 
 ciples, and may be left, therefore, to another time 
 and place. But I would indicate an essential dis- 
 tinction between relations and interests, which seems 
 of vital moment, and which is the answer to such 
 objectors as might demur to the enfranchisement of 
 interests, on the plea that inasmuch as interests 
 always involve relations — " property has its duties 
 as well as its rights" — to enfranchise an interest, 
 in se, would be to give an undue preponderance to 
 property. Social relations should be counted in esti- 
 mating the citizen as a component part of the state, 
 because (among other reasons) each new relation 
 which a man protends — each new social office he fills
 
 17 
 
 — binds him to his fellows by a new kind of social 
 obligation. But it is the kind and not the quantity 
 of the obligation that the relation expresses, and, in 
 the majority of cases, it is the kind rather than the 
 quantity that affects his value and character as a 
 citizen. A man Avith his third wife may be no 
 more husbandly than with his first ; and the father 
 of a dozen children and of one may be equally pater- 
 nal. But when we come to deal with interests, ex- 
 pressing rights, the case is different, because it is not 
 so much the kind, as, so to speak, the quantity of 
 right that expresses a man's shape and weight as a 
 citizen. " The widow's mite" is not to the point, 
 because in the parable it represented not a right but 
 a virtue. If one objects that when legislation takes 
 the widow's mite (which is her "all") it interferes 
 with a larger quantum of right than when it takes 
 the mite of the millionaire, I would answer that, in 
 both cases, it interferes with the right to a mite and 
 no more. If the widow had ten mites, she would 
 have the same right to each of them as to her " one," 
 and she holds her " one" by a right neither larger 
 nor less than that by which she holds each of those 
 decimals. That her one mite when she gives it up 
 to the state may represent as much patriotism as the 
 million pounds of the millionaire is quite true ; but 
 in this it is the measure of a virtue and not of a 
 riHit; — and a measure so difficult of use and srauo-e 
 as to be unavailable for the rough purposes of 
 human government. Again, her right to a mite 
 
 c
 
 18 
 
 may, when the mite is " her all," involve other 
 rights, as e. g. the right to life. But this involution 
 is not in virtue of her mterest in a mite but her 
 interest in her " all," which is in an entirely other 
 category, and would be dealt with on other legislative 
 principles than those of ordinary fiscal legislation. 
 The allness of the mite represents its size and shape 
 in the economy of the owner, the miteness of it repre- 
 sents, so far as it can be represented by property, the 
 owner's bodily size and shape in the economy of the 
 nation. I say "bodily" size and shape, for every 
 man not a felon or (in the absolute sense) a pauper, 
 has, viewed as a subject for legislation, a dual ex- 
 istence — he exists per se^ and by the proxy of his 
 goods. Legislation cannot move without impinging 
 on goods ; but as it never affects them as possessions 
 of tenants in common, or as a copartnery of equal 
 shares, the size of that second existence is a quantity 
 differing in every citizen. AVhile that impersonal- 
 lookmg statute that impartially levies so much in the 
 hypothetical pound practically means that, though I 
 and my neighbour look so much alike, I am to pay a 
 trifle and he is to bleed thousands a year, it is as 
 evident that my neighbour's real personality is, as 
 regards this law, greater than mine, as if he had 
 personally stretched out before the tax-gatherer an 
 anaconda length of living substance to visible in- 
 fliction. AVhile, therefore, the real self of one man 
 so differs from that of another, self-government 
 surely requires a representative cxjn'cssioii of that
 
 19 
 
 difference ; whether that difference consist in the 
 differing number of functions whereby a man assists 
 in composing that total citizen the state, or in the 
 differing size of his share in that great partnership, 
 whereby (to use an analogue not quite perfect) this 
 political corporation holds its lands and goods. And 
 those who propose to find that expression in a plu- 
 rality of votes, are only adopting, for parliamentary 
 elections, a machinery which, in regard to the smaller 
 elections for parochial parliaments, has already the 
 assent of the country. They may fairly suggest 
 also that, perhaps, the idea of plural voting has been 
 recognised in English political life from time im- 
 memorial, and might inquire whether the facts that 
 some districts return one and some two members to 
 Parliament — i. e. that each elector in the one has 
 double the choosing power of his compatriot in the 
 other — and that the same elector may have a vote 
 for more than one locality — i. e. that as concerns the 
 total result of a general election his choosing power 
 may be multiplied to any extent of which locomotion 
 will allow — are not of that germinal kind that con- 
 tams a developable principle, and do not so far 
 nullify the entire electoral equality that has been 
 claimed for our system as to throw doubt on the 
 fundamental character of it? However this may be, 
 I am aware of the objections which mil spring to 
 the imagmation of many politicians, when I propose 
 that the vote of every British subject, unconvicted of 
 crime, shall be taken at the elections of members to
 
 20 
 
 serve iii Parliament, but shall be reckoned (according 
 to some scale to be fixed after due parliamentary 
 inquiry) at a value commensurate with the number of 
 his social relations and the extent of his rights of 
 proj)erty : — counting one for the man, if any such 
 exist, who is only a subject, and so on, upwards, for 
 every other. 
 
 That is to say, I Avould propose that the total of 
 votes (by minorities and majorities) at a general 
 election should represent the total of ci^ic functions 
 that make up that vast civis the nation, and the total 
 of lands and goods which he rightfully possesses ; and 
 that the number of these votes given by any one 
 ciA^culus (so to speak) should indicate the value of 
 him and his in the composition of those national 
 wholes. Belie\dng that a plan of this kind is likely 
 to secure the end I have ventured to propose as the 
 object of all beneficial representation — the repre- 
 sentation of the thing represented "at its efficient 
 durable best" — I would beg the further patience of 
 yourself and your friends while I point out some other 
 advantages which seem to inhere in such a system. 
 
 1. To ascertain the electoral qualifications of an 
 elector would require no new or inquisitorial ma- 
 chinery. As I propose to enfranchise not moral or 
 intellectual qualities, but the civic functions which, 
 on the average (and an average quite as high as that 
 of the political ability indicated by tenancy of a 10/. 
 or a i')L house), arc their social signs, and not .abstract 
 rights, l)ut lliose possessions wliicli, wluii uinpics-
 
 21 
 
 tioned by the law, are their sufficiently accurate evi- 
 dence, the new franchise would have to take cogni- 
 sance of nothing that was not already recognised 
 and identified by title-deeds, diplomas, tax-receipts, 
 licenses, parish - registers, apprenticeship - indentures, 
 and the like unmistakable testimony. It is not 
 amenable, therefore, to the strong arguments that 
 have been urged against a metaphysical franchise. 
 
 2. As entirely comprehensive and self-adjusting, it 
 would be likely to save us from those eras of organic 
 change which, viewed from within or without, have 
 hitherto been the great perils of constitutional peoples. 
 Descending at once to the lowest possible, and making 
 the personnel of the constitution commensurate with 
 the nation, you rest it, so to speak, on that immove- 
 able basis of the earth Avhereon terrestrial things can 
 alone be permanent, instead of poising it, as at pre- 
 sent, on a seething mass of incongruous life, — like 
 those carved Italian pulpits whose supports are run- 
 ning beasts and fighting men. At the same time, by 
 such a system, the passage of the " lowest" classes in 
 the State to great political power would happen, 
 mthout convulsion or organic strain, in proportion as 
 they added to their numerical force those civic func- 
 tions which raise them in the scale of virtual citizen- 
 ship, — that is to say, in proportion as they became 
 part of the nation's " efficient durable best." 
 
 3. It would save us from universal suffrage, po- 
 pularly so called. To resist that most mortal of all 
 enemies to human progress without denjdng any
 
 22 
 
 claims that can, by pro\dng themselves consistent 
 ■with that progress, show presumptive (or by proving 
 themselves advantageous to it, show conclusive) proofs 
 that the}^ are rights, is surely among the first present 
 duties of British statesmanship. By enfranchising 
 every non-criminal British subject, and ending that 
 indefinite consciousness of half- understood wrong 
 Avhich must exist in every man whose political exist- 
 ence is denied (however just to eyes that do not see 
 from his standpoint such a denial may be), you 
 relieve the State for ever from a great chronic danger 
 which any lassitude or incompetence in those who, 
 from time to time, adjust the political safety-valves, 
 may convert into the most active maleficent force. 
 " Universal sufi"rage" — the plan, i. e. of ringing up 
 the servants to settle your vexed questions of philo- 
 sophy, art, and morals — has too little attraction for 
 the Eno:lish order of mind to be ever an indiorenous 
 danger ; but as it is in full force in nations Avith 
 whom every day is bringing us into more sympathetic 
 union, we are likely, "without preventive care, to 
 receive, by infection, a disease not congenital to 
 British common sense. For that preventive care no 
 mere theoretical demonstration will sufiice. To con- 
 vince the reason that "universal suffrage" is unrea- 
 sonable will be useless, so fiir as the excluded classes 
 are concerned, while feeling answers that its denial 
 involves the refusal of a right, and its establishment 
 the removal of a wrong. To show tlint what is called 
 "universal suffrage" is not "universal" at all (since
 
 23 
 
 the suffrage of the beaten minority is not represented 
 in the result), but really means absolute choice by 
 whatever party happens to be the most numerous; 
 that, in the present (and every other immature) state 
 of the world, that condition of mind which chooses ill, 
 under difficulties, is more common than that which 
 chooses well ; that therefore, when numbers choose, 
 their choice (deducting a small percentage for excep- 
 tional cases) will be erroneous; that the knowledge 
 of this will deter the best men from offering them- 
 selves to electors who are known, a priori^ to prefer 
 the inferior, and that from an assembly of " the in- 
 ferior" the various interplay of moral attraction and 
 repulsion would soon eliminate the small percentage 
 of better whom accident might have intruded on it ; 
 that an assembly thus finally representing only the 
 inferior elements of a nation, so far from realising 
 that " efficient durable best" which is the necessary 
 condition of beneficial representation, because the 
 only condition of national life which is truly favour- 
 able to individual and collective progress, must exer- 
 cise the national bemg precisely in that manner 
 whereby men and nations deteriorate, and by degrad- 
 ing its own individuality, and withdrawing it more 
 and more from its just partnership in the community 
 of peoples, eventually make its political existence a 
 menace to the civilised world; to show all this, and 
 conclude that such an electoral system is one of the 
 most preposterous mistakes and deceptions by which 
 the half- thinking of sentimental or passionate theorists,
 
 u 
 
 and the polic}' or profligacy of astute or desperate ad- 
 venturers, ever caught the multitudes whose perilous 
 intelligence, like the eye with which the salmon sees the 
 hook-bearing sham, is enough for temptation, but insuffi- 
 cient for judgment, "udll avail nothing to convince these 
 very multitudes, while the grievance of an exclusion, 
 which no reasoning can disprove, is agitating, by the 
 ignominy of odious comparison, those passions Avhich 
 are the common life of all men. Xor will it avail much 
 more to point across the Atlantic, where, with a thou- 
 sand exceptional conditions to favour the experiment, 
 the system, even thus early in the national history, has 
 notoriously shut out the best minds of America from 
 politics, and set nearly every tuning-fork of public 
 opinion to the lower key-notes of the countr}^ : nor 
 across the Chamiel, where, with whatever apparent 
 temporary success, the worst e^dls of the machine are 
 corrected by Imperial interference, and to show that 
 this mode of amendment is as faulty in principle as 
 we knoAV it to be demoralising in practice. Setting- 
 aside such an exceptional event as that conflux of 
 causes whereby the present Emperor reigns, it may 
 safely be laid down that if, in the countries of 
 universal suffrage, the lieads of the State are not 
 such men as universal suffrage would naturally 
 select, they have, by their own hypotlicsis, no right 
 to govern ; and that if, on the other hand, they are 
 truly the exponents of that suffrage, their interference 
 in the further action of the electoral macliine merely 
 completes the vicious circk; of that pernicious consist-
 
 25 
 
 ency whereby the excelsior arc of the national whole 
 is perpetually wheeling under, the upward shoots of 
 popular life continually contorted towards the ground, 
 the mounting virtues and abilities which are the 
 natural captains of progress incessantly reduced to 
 the ranks, and the nation which, by encouraging 
 what is best, highest, and most beautiful within it, 
 and setting itself to those, should be a vast school of 
 human and national advancement, converted, by de- 
 liberately making a goal of zero, a lesson of ignorance, 
 and a standard of " ipsissimum vulgus," into an enor- 
 mous engine of personal, social, and political retro- 
 gression. 
 
 These argumenta ad homines are useless, because 
 they appeal to precisely that knowledge of human 
 character, and to that political wisdom, which the 
 classes addressed are certain not to possess. To the 
 ploughman, the difference in statesmanship between 
 Lord Palmerston and Mr. Stanton is inappreciable; 
 but he perceives quite well, if he had no vote for the 
 one, that any ploughman in America might, so far as 
 qualification goes, have voted for the other. 
 
 By representing every man's comparative weight 
 in the state, instead of enfranchising a mere unit of 
 number, I believe that you would satisfy whatever 
 may be just in the claims of numbers as numbers, 
 while you counteract the possibility of a numerical 
 despotism; and you, therefore, attain the advantages 
 of universal suffrage without those evils by which it 
 has been the bane of politics, and which must rank
 
 26 
 
 it as an electoral system — whether such system be con- 
 sidered as an engme of present welfare or as a pro- 
 gress-machine — among the least rational adaptations 
 of means to ends, by which those semi-passions that 
 so often pass for reason have humoured the desires, 
 apologised for the foregone conclusions, and hocussed 
 the fumbling conscience of mankind. 
 
 4. It is favourable to hereditary monarchy. By 
 the polarity of things, democracy — when it means 
 the rule of the multitude — must always be liable to 
 Ctesarism, and that Ca?sarism may virtually include 
 the four-year king, called president, late American 
 events have suggested. I need not here go mto the 
 argument by which it would be easy to prove that 
 elective monarchy — called by whatever name — is as 
 incompatible with the political machinery of a true 
 republic as it is injurious to the moral, spiritual, and 
 artistic life of the people Avho create it ; and that the 
 only royalty that consists with the full necessities of 
 constitutional freedom is a function of the body- 
 politic too exquisitely fine to be made and remade 
 periodically by the rude hands of voting millions. 
 That i)ositive of so many negations, that aureole 
 of reflex rays and refracted colours, that cerebral 
 plexus of converging and reverting nerves and forces, 
 is impossible to the turbulence of popular change ; 
 only in the unshaken quiet of absolute security can the 
 undisturbed elements take the fortunate concurrence. 
 But though tlie argument for hereditary monarchy 
 is so well understood in England that J may assume
 
 27 
 
 its conclusions for granted, it may be well to point out 
 that hereditary monarchy, to be a political success, 
 must find among the people consistent habits of 
 thought and congruous social institutions. If not, 
 the gilded car of royalty ballooning in mid-air above 
 the levels of " Liberte, Egalite," will become an idol 
 or a popinjay ; or the king, standing in midst of 
 those levels, will soon, since a king's stature is not 
 necessarily greater than a subject's, be run down by 
 the contempt of multitudinous familiarity. In other 
 words, royalty in the one case, too far removed from 
 the common people to be the object of useful criticism, 
 and surroundino; itself — since kino;s are men, and 
 have men's necessities of love and friendship — mth a 
 self-created cabal of favourites, would become a peril 
 to liberty, or an exasperating mark for popular 
 passions: in the other case, the exigencies of daily 
 life would so vulgarise the king and his function, 
 that the idea of the function would be lost in that 
 of the man — a loss mortal to hereditary rule unless 
 in those exceptional kingdoms founded, so to speak, 
 by demigods, whose superhuman longevity is re- 
 presented rather than succeeded by their heirs. 
 The present French empire is an instance of this 
 rare kind, and should never be counted among elec- 
 tive monarchies. You remember the guardsman's 
 answer to the news that the first Napoleon was dead, 
 — "Lui mort ! vous le connaissez bien !" That 
 touching answer, unsurpassed in history, was really 
 the answer of France. It was as vicegerent of this
 
 28 
 
 unconquerable immortality that Louis Napoleon came 
 to power, and though a thousand evidences of states- 
 manship have since confirmed his title to his uncle's 
 throne, the patent by which he took it was signed 
 and dated in St. Helena. 
 
 But in ordmary kmgdoms, it is the monarchy 
 rather than the monarch that is, and ought to be 
 perennial; and that part of the popular imagmation 
 which conceives general notions has so little native 
 force, that it requires to be protected from the com- 
 petition of those keen personal images which, though, 
 as our happy experience shows, they may occa- 
 sionally dignify the ideas they represent, may also, 
 and (since hereditary succession camiot guarantee 
 personal character) more often, degrade or supersede 
 them. I believe that some such electoral system as 
 that which I have ventured to propose would favour 
 among the people those habits of thought and that 
 social attitude which would furnish a new safeguard 
 to the great monarchical abstraction. By associating 
 with the popular notion of progress the notion of 
 constitutional permanence, and with the popular idea 
 (because with the popular practice) of liberty and 
 civic fraternity the idea of personal and political 
 inequality, and by creating among citizens the recog- 
 nition and the exercise of a graduated order of })ower, 
 I think it would prove not only the best expositor of 
 popular rights, but would tend also to conserve that 
 hereditary royalty without wliicli (or its }'et unknown 
 substitute) no true republic can long exist.
 
 29 
 
 5. It is at once Protestant and (,'atholic, and a 
 guarantee, therefore, against the extension of Roman 
 Catholic inflnence. Protestantism, of all varieties, 
 must always rely upon the thinking and half-think- 
 ing classes ; while, if the papacy is to exist, its future 
 strength must be the millions. It must always rule 
 through the very high or the very low. It is too well 
 read to believe immediately that new facts are endur- 
 able; but when changes evidently irresistible show 
 that power is never more to be won from the fears and 
 hoj^es of a king, it will try the other pole of the same 
 magnet and find it in the depths of the people. 
 Hitherto its political strategy has been the mastery 
 of an exceptional few of peculiar position, education, 
 and resulting character, whose royal desire for the 
 privilege of sinning safely, and linown ability to pay 
 for it royally, made them the special customers of 
 " St. Peter." Henceforth the one prmce is carved 
 into ten or twenty million; and since, in the nature 
 of things, a like entourage of cardinals, bishops, con- 
 fessors, or what not, can no longer be spent in the 
 reduction of each unit in this multitude, the deficiency 
 in available force will suggest a change in the cha- 
 racter of the campaign. Twenty cacciatori may 
 hardly manage a tiger, but one may suffice for a 
 whole parish of sparrows. By a change in the 
 nature, not of the sportsman but of the game, and a 
 slight corresponding modification in the weapons, 
 the disposable power of the Roman hierarchy may 
 still do immense execution. Prey, adequately weak
 
 30 
 
 however, can usually be found only among the least 
 intelligent of mankind; but as in the countries of 
 universal suffrage, these classes must, for the next half- 
 century, have a vast majority, it is exactly they who 
 will be the possessors of sovereign power. The parti 
 pretre Avill soon perceive that in those countries uni- 
 versal suflfrage means the despotism of the masses, 
 and that the despotism of the masses means the 
 despotism of those by whom the masses are swayed ; 
 that is to say, that the problem of obtainhig political 
 influence there, is the problem of obtaining personal 
 and mdividual influence over the most ignorant and 
 least able men and women in them. That personal 
 and individual influence, entirely independent of 
 reason or virtue, the wise machinery of the Romish 
 Church precisely enables it to acquire, and its admi- 
 rable adaptivity will soon — unless, in fulfilment of 
 the classic Ime, it has already entered the dementian 
 phase of a damnatory fiat — devise some such further 
 instruments of popularity as may enable it for a time 
 to besiege its enemies with the very troops they had 
 mustered for its destruction. It may be said that 
 these considerations apply to the continents of Europe 
 and America, but are foreign to r)ritisli interests. 
 Without pointing to Ireland as a fulcrum for any 
 papal Archimedes avIio may wish to try his hand at 
 " the world," I would suggest that at the present era 
 it may be wise to foreclose the possibilities of any 
 class })y which Ivomanism may exercise pressure upon 
 Parliament. Tlie Church of England will })robably
 
 31 
 
 exist as a personality long after, by that irresistible 
 endosmosis and exosmosis whereby her ablest thinkers 
 are already unintentionally assimilating her to the 
 heterodoxy of the external world, her present creed 
 has passed insensibly into the next forward stage of 
 spiritual transformation. When Parliament, in due 
 season, has to formularize that change, it will be of 
 the gravest importance that its action be purely 
 expository, and that no temporary exertions of a 
 party, to whichever meeting extreme of the Roman 
 circle that party may belong, should put an institu- 
 tion so powerful for good or evil, and so certain — 
 from the stability of its wealth, honours, and influence 
 — to rouse all sacred and mundane ambitions, out of 
 harmony with "the efficient durable best" of the 
 nation to which it belongs. 
 
 6. It would o-ive a hio-her sanction to the action 
 of Government on minorities. 
 
 When we say that a nation electing its repre- 
 sentatives by this or that kind of franchise would be 
 self-governed, we mean, of course, that the dominating 
 party or parties in it would be self-governed. How- 
 ever much you may attempt to " represent minori- 
 ties," there must always be a residue of unrepresented 
 nonconformity, who must submit to a government in 
 which they had no direct share. Towards such mi- 
 norities, whether large or small, the party or union 
 of parties, which is politically, for the time bemg, the 
 nation, acts as man to man. It may, therefore, be of 
 the greatest importance that the title of the one to
 
 32 
 
 temporary empire should be such as commands the 
 conscience of the other. In quiet times the more 
 conventional and superficial considerations for which 
 the loser submits to the wimier (as, for instance, the 
 compact to abide by the results of an appeal to 
 numbers, which is implied by electoral coaction) 
 are sufficient to msure the good-humour of the 
 game; but in great crises it may be of vital con- 
 sequence that the few thinkers who, in all parties, 
 control the many workers, should be able to recog- 
 nize more radical claims to respect. Now, in actions 
 between indi^ddual men, an ao:ent's hiohest claim to 
 act is, that he acts in his moral right. The highest 
 presumptive evidence that he is in his moral right is, 
 therefore (short of absolute demonstration), the best 
 available evidence of his title to act. That the proof 
 of his title to act would not necessarily be proof of 
 his title to act unopposed, may be very true ; but if 
 it immensely increases the gravamen and responsi- 
 bilities of opposition, its political value is nearly as 
 great. Xow a nation acting by an organism that 
 represents its efficient durable best, offers the highest 
 presumptive evidence that it acts in its moral right; 
 and comes therefore to a dissident minority, with the 
 highest avaihible title to empire. If you were merely 
 a })olitician, in the vulgar sense of the word, I should 
 not tr<)ul)le you with the theorem ol" which tliis pi-o- 
 position is corolhiry ; but, knowing that you and I 
 are seldom satisfied with any brancli of arts or science 
 unless we can, more or less ck^arly, see back to its
 
 33 
 
 bifurcation with the universal Igdrasil, I would 
 merely beg you to remember, while examining it, 
 the disadvantages under which, in this letter, so 
 synoptical an argument must be stated. 
 
 I say not only " in a letter," but " in this letter," 
 because I know you wish to show it to many of your 
 friends, and I must therefore avoid the technique of 
 philosophy. 
 
 Man being imperfect and perfectible, and moral 
 philosophy, therefore, a department of embryology, I 
 would say that the being and domg of a perfect 
 human creature is the standard of absolute human 
 good.* But as we are all at present imperfect, how 
 is this standard to be utilised? 
 
 The difference between the perfect and the imper- 
 fect is not a difference of kind but of development. 
 Therefore the good of any perfectible imperfect 
 human creature, — whether man or nation, — is (not 
 perfunctory imitation of a perfect specimen, but) such 
 being and doing as develop it towards perfection. 
 That is to say, that a perfectible's good cannot be the 
 subject of exact definition, extra se, inasmuch as it 
 differs not only for each perfectible but for each 
 phase of the same perfectible : in other words, that 
 it comes not under the science of morals, as usually 
 understood, but under the science (and art) of edu- 
 cation, properly so called. Now the science of edu- 
 
 * I must ask you to wait a little longer for that still unfinished 
 book, so often promised to your friendly questions, in which I have 
 endeavoured to apply this standard to the cosmos of human affairs. 
 
 D
 
 34 
 
 cation should show us that every perfectible being 
 has an autonomy according to which its development 
 proceeds ; but that the relation of any stage of pro- 
 gress to final perfection is to be judged not by phe- 
 nomenal likeness (since this does not always increase 
 in the ratio of succession), but by its place m the 
 autonomical order. The case being so, there must 
 be great difficulty m defining for any being the ear- 
 liest limit of passive good ; but we may safely say of 
 any change, — e. g. of any activity, — that if in the 
 perfectional order of development, it is good. (Of 
 course there may be cases, as of over-development or 
 unhealthy develoj^ment, or of moral evil reacting m 
 greater good, where retrogression may be essential 
 progress, but these are abnormal.) 
 
 Now though man is a complex unity of many com- 
 paratively simple beings, each having its autonomy, 
 natural history, and personal welfare, but each and 
 all subserving the autonomy of the whole, and 
 though there are some peculiarities which still further 
 complicate the problem of man, — for instance, that 
 his progress in the perfecting order not only requires 
 (as in the embryology of all complex creatures) 
 changes in collocation and proportion of parts, but 
 some curious illustrations of (so to speak) isomerism 
 and isomorphism, as well as (perhaps) certain excre- 
 tory or exfoliatory processes, we may still apply to 
 him the foregoing formula of good. For though that 
 activity of the whole in the perfectional order of 
 development, which is its "law" of good, may not
 
 35 
 
 always consist with the individual welfare of all the 
 parts (that is to say, may interfere vntli perfection- 
 ating them as wholes, in order to perfectionate them 
 as parts), and though, at the same time, a certain con- 
 formity to the sanitary conditions of these " parts," as 
 individuals, is necessary to the health of the whole 
 (and health is a siiie qua 7ion of moral development), 
 this correlation of forces is a problem to be worked 
 out for every new case, and does not interfere with 
 the general principle; inasmuch as whatever may, 
 ipso easily be that co-estate and co-activity of parts 
 which can be proved to advance the whole in 
 the perfectional order, conforms to the "law" of 
 good. 
 
 But man is not an unreasoning creature, uncon- 
 sciously developing and ignorantly realising that 
 " relative good" by Avhich he will attain perfection. 
 He is a mens sihi conscia recti, — a self-conscious mind, 
 not only doing and being good, but having ideas of 
 it and of himself in relation to it. These ideas shape 
 his moral right. The mental function concerned with 
 them seems to be that plexus of abilities commonly 
 called " conscience." This plexus seems to have two 
 signal characteristics : the aptitude to receive moral 
 ideas ab extra, whether as abstractions or as images ; 
 and the power (usually accompanying special apti- 
 tudes) to secern a mirage of them, when deprived of 
 the natural object. Now education, anthropology, or 
 howsoever you would name that branch of embryo- 
 logy, the science of developing-man, shows that in
 
 36 
 
 the favourable diagnosis and prognosis of his advance 
 in the perfectional order, and of the existence of 
 those mternal relations between conscience and the 
 rest of him which constitute morality, there are some 
 cardinal signs. Among these are : the content by 
 the conscience of the highest notions of human per- 
 fection which it can, at the given time, honestly 
 hold : the best conformity thereto which the re- 
 mainder of his abilities can honestly, consistently, and 
 healthily maintain. Turning from the science to the 
 art of education, we may say, therefore, that these are 
 the most favourino; conditions of his o:ood. Deduct- 
 ing from these conditions what is external to himself, 
 this is to say, in other words, that a man is most likely 
 to be relatively good and morally right when his 
 powers and qualities are co-existing at their efficient 
 durable best, and that to establish the fjxct of that 
 coexistence is to establish the highest probability of 
 that good and right. Therefore, granting that what 
 is true for that human multiplicity in unity, the 
 individual man, is true for that human multiplicity 
 in unity, the individual nation, a people represented 
 at its efficient durable best, and acting by that repre- 
 sentation, offiirs to all challengers, and among others 
 to any dissident minority that for the time may 
 separate itself from the national whole, the highest 
 attainable guarantee that it acts in its moral right, 
 and, therefore, the most authoritative human claim 
 to the respect of moral beings. 
 
 7. It offers the best securities to liberty.
 
 37 
 
 What is true liberty? 
 
 We have seen that the being and doing of a perfect 
 human being, whether man or nation, furnish the 
 standard of absolute human good ; and that relative 
 human good is such being and doing as are, for the 
 given creature, in the order of progress towards 
 perfection. True liberty is the freedom for such 
 being and doing. Now if, as we may safely take 
 for granted, in a society of imperfect, perfectible 
 beings, the relation of no two beings to perfection is 
 exactly the same, the good of each must differ from 
 that of his neighbour, and his liberty must there- 
 fore differ also. There may be those whose liberty 
 is a freedom nearly absolute, and there may be those, 
 on the other hand, whose truest liberty is little more 
 than the freedom of willing not to be free. But if 
 a million citizens have a million differing liberties, 
 how are they to be harmonized ? Organize the 
 million, and apply to that complex human unit the 
 organized million what you have found to be valid 
 for that complex human unit the individual man. 
 The million-fold unit may exact from the units which 
 compose it what each of these units may exact from 
 its constituents — just so much and no more subor- 
 dination of the autonomy of each part as is necessary 
 for the autonomy of the ^diole ; i. e. just so much 
 modification of its perfectionating order as a whole 
 as may be necessary to " perfectionate" it as a part; 
 i. e. so much personal sacrifice in each of the million 
 as may put the million-fold person in the order of
 
 38 
 
 its perfection, and may realize for it, therefore, the 
 conditions of its moral o^ood. Kow we have fomid — 
 I need not again go through the progress of finding 
 — that any human bemg, man or nation, gives the 
 highest presumptive evidence that he is in his per- 
 fectional order when he shows that he is and does 
 at his efficient durable best. Therefore, a nation 
 represented at its efficient durable best offers the 
 highest proof that human fallibility permits of its 
 right to control the personal liberty of every citizen 
 who is a constituent of that representation. On such 
 citizens as, not bemg represented, form part of a 
 minority in such a state, I have already shown that 
 the dominant majority have the highest attainable 
 claims to respect. I think, therefore, I may fairly 
 claim that, whether as regards the ruling majority 
 or the dissentient minority, a nation represented at 
 its efficient durable best offers the hio'hest g-uarantees 
 for true constitutional liberty. Indeed may it not 
 almost be said that a just realization of true liberty 
 — i. e. of such relative liberty as is true to a given 
 point in human progress — is only probable to a 
 nation so organized : because no other nation is 
 likely, as a nation, to have such ideas of right and 
 wrong as are exactly congruous with its place in 
 human history, or, dealing with events as they arise, 
 could so completely concrete ad has and upon them, 
 so to speak, the unwritten law existing at the time and 
 place in the given i)liase of the national conscience? 
 I believe tliat, in our own day, for example, we
 
 39 
 
 hardly guess how much such a people might safely 
 simplify legislation, or how modest and sparse might 
 be that well-placed and little-seen police of law, 
 enforcing merely the primary and necessary con- 
 ditions of all progress, by whose agency the great 
 human concourse of moral liberties might march at 
 all paces, in all measures, in how many aberrations, 
 and to what discordant tunes, along the mighty 
 highway of political freedom. 
 
 8. By representing property — i. e. by establishing 
 a ratio between a man's legislative power and the 
 extent of his liability to legislation — you subserve 
 the principle of self-government (for self-government 
 cannot fully exist if the quantum of my power to 
 legislate bears no proportion to the area I offer to 
 legislative impact) while by ballasting the restless- 
 ness of discontent with the salutary inertia of those 
 who are satisfied, and exposing the cheap courage 
 which risks the goods of others to the cautious cen- 
 sorship of self-interest, you make change sufficiently 
 laborious to guarantee the safety of progress. And 
 by thus giving a legal existence to the just influence 
 of property, you starve out those illegal forms of 
 political corruption by which at present it so bale- 
 fully asserts itself, and which show such tenacity of 
 injurious life because they have root in one of those 
 half-rights which no law dares authorize, but which 
 no large justice can absolutely condemn. At the 
 same time, by representing numbers, intelhgence, 
 and character, you insure us against " Plutocracy "
 
 40 
 
 — which, as has been well said, is of all " cracies" the 
 most intolerable to a noble nation,-^— and provide us 
 with a political body, which, while Efficiently coarse 
 to incorporate, in good healthy hea^^ workable bulk, 
 the subtle forces of the national soul, and preserve 
 us from the dangers of " ideal" politics, shall be true 
 to those organic princij^les whereby, in all livmg 
 things whose arena is the earth (the finer in the fine 
 permeating the less fine that enters the gross, and 
 pushing, by those sheaths, into the dense), the 
 deadest obstruction of matter is informed with the 
 controlHng immateriality of life, and finally, in our 
 dull mortal fashion, opened to the safe access even 
 of " dominating ideas." 
 
 9. By representing "character" and "intelli- 
 gence," you satisfy the cry for enfranchising intelli- 
 gence and character; but by increasing the electoral 
 value of each man in proportion as he is mental, 
 moral, and serviceable, instead of endeavouring to 
 give form and political activity to such abstractions 
 as "intelligence," "virtue," or any other concept, 
 you avoid the danger of creating monsters (for every 
 human function or attribute dissected out from the 
 rest, and invested with separate and active existence 
 is monstrous) which must sooner or later evince 
 their abnormity — as in historical precedents they 
 have evinced it — by preying on the wholesome 
 complexities of natural life. 
 
 10. By any system that, combining the advan- 
 tages without the dangers of democracy, oligarchy.
 
 41 
 
 and monarchy, shall realise the efficient durable best 
 of the British race inhabiting these islands, we shall 
 maintain that exemplary position by which it seems 
 to be the vocation of that race to assist the education 
 of mankind. Such an incarnation of an autonomy as, 
 if not the final perfection of the creature, shall be 
 a natural phase of the ordered change that culmi- 
 nates in perfection, should be the object of every one 
 who, in any department of constructive art, en- 
 deavours to follow the Divine process of creation. 
 A nation realising its " efficient durable best" would 
 certainly be such an incarnation; and whatever 
 nation first achieved it would have the right, de 
 facto, to expect a great part in the world, and a 
 great formative influence on all future political 
 changes. But if that nation were British, the event 
 would be additionally significant, because precisely 
 one of those complementary facts that — like a half- 
 discovered planet, guaranteed, while yet invisible, by 
 the necessities of an extant solar system — complete 
 the consistency of things already established. The 
 more intimately we know the other tribes of civilised 
 men, the more we must perceive that, though they 
 are likely to excel us in particular functions of hu- 
 man genius, the special conditions of our origin and 
 growth have given the body corporate of the British 
 people that truth to all manhood, that generic hu- 
 manity of intense anthropomorphism (as opposed to 
 the disembodied notions of speculators, or the cha- 
 racterless indifferentism of weak races), which fit it 
 
 E
 
 42 
 
 not only to expound the total progress of Europe, 
 but to be the pivot-man, time-keeper, pitch-pipe, 
 root-stem, or by whatever other metaphor from the 
 arts you may express a living and dominating fact 
 to which none of them have a precise analogue, of 
 that slow universal transfiguration which is working 
 out the destiny of man. By a self-sustaining, self- 
 adapting, self-registering political organisation, which 
 shall amply, freely, and accurately give effect to 
 our compound nationality, we shall best fulfil this 
 splendid ofiice, and best, therefore, insure that per- 
 manence therein whereby the system of nature re- 
 wards all special aptitudes. Qualifying ourselves for 
 this proud position towards the world at large, by 
 measures primarily taken with no ambition to that 
 end, but honestly chosen for their supposed subser- 
 vience to our most direct and personal duties, who 
 knows that we may not unconsciously attain to the 
 mysterious splendour of something even yet more 
 sacred ? The day may be far distant, and its supreme 
 glory may not be for these latitudes, when a nation 
 of perfect men and women, perfectly expressing it- 
 self, may be, so to speak, the national Koyog of social 
 and political truth; but — as the clean hands and 
 pure heart, even of men still imperfect, have before 
 now dispensed the Divine Spirit — who shall say how 
 soon, or how often, in the intervening future, a noble 
 and Christian people, true, within and without, to 
 its " efficient durable best," might utter by its legis- 
 lation, and exemplify by its practice, a vox populi
 
 43 
 
 as yet unknown in the modern world — a voice that 
 should prove the hackneyed adage to have been like 
 many another bad proverb, the prophecy of those 
 who, out of due time, perceived as accomplished fact 
 the necessary possible ? 
 
 Finishing the last sentence, I seem to hear the 
 deafening rataplan of that great drum whereby, in 
 the plaza or piazza of a Spanish or Italian fair, or at 
 some market-day street-corner of Provence or Langue- 
 doc, the conjuror and " medicme-man" of Southern 
 Europe summons the crowd to his pharmaceutical 
 wares. With what complacent head-shakes of su- 
 perior knowledge he lifts the arm of the dislocated 
 skeleton, fits ball to socket, and pumps it into repre- 
 sentative action! How paternally his smiling care 
 picks out the baby's skull from the travelling ar- 
 canum, spikes it tenderly on the little back-bone, 
 and nurses the " far too naked" mannikin ! In how 
 cheerful a confidence he afterwards descants on his 
 panacea, and compels you to the pilulae juventutis or 
 elixir immortalitatis ! 
 
 This spontaneous association of ideas is, I confess, 
 hardly flattering; but its spontaneity suggests that 
 it is not wholly unjust. I cannot, it is true, com- 
 pete with the conjuror in anatomy, philanthropy, or 
 eloquence; but my alkahest may, perhaps, seem 
 warranted to cure all diseases, and inaugurate Uto- 
 pia and Atlantis. While disclaiming every dispo- 
 sition towards such a warranty, however, I must 
 admit that, in one respect, the conjuror's medical
 
 44 
 
 science and mine may not be at all dissimilar. His 
 bread-pills will, I believe, have little ^-iolent effect 
 on the present condition of the patient ; but if they 
 save him from drugs of positive and mortal acti\aty, 
 they may be the second causes of welfare to himself 
 and benefit to his friends through whatever earthly 
 years of healthy life and vital progress may seem 
 good to the God by whom men and nations live. 
 At any rate, whatever you think of the nostrum, 
 
 Believe me, yours affectionately 
 
 Sydney Dobell. 
 
 NoTce Place, near Gloucester. 
 
 PB^ 
 
 
 LONDON 
 
 nODSON AND BON, OUEAT NORTHERN TRINTINO WORKS, 
 
 I'ANCUAS ROAIl, N.W. 
 
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 UC SOUIHf RN Ri GIONAL LIBRARY f Pf,!! II / 
 
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